


The Deerbrooke Devil

by SpookOrSpectre



Series: Enigma Project [4]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Halloween, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpookOrSpectre/pseuds/SpookOrSpectre
Summary: Something fell from the sky outside a town in Deerbrooke county. The military doesn't know what it is, but they do know that they can't let the public find it first. What was a simple recovery mission turns into a cataclysm in this Halloween special...
Series: Enigma Project [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1590415
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Ah! It's Halloween!

**SpookOrSpectre presents, in a Halloween special:**

_**THE DEERBROOKE DEVIL** _

_Enjoy... if you dare!_

* * *

The small, floppy eared vampire watched as the tubby alien ate more orange cookies. Judy had come to the ZPD Halloween party in her A3I suit with a large, fantastic cloak over it, the obnoxious collar upturned to show the red interior. She had even filed her ever-growing teeth into fangs just for the occasion. Sadly, the turnout for the party was rather questionable.

"This isn't as exciting as I thought it would be," Clawhauser said.

"Yeah, I sharpened my teeth but looks like most of the guys are gonna miss out on it."

"You should keep 'em like that, a little intimidation for your haters… plus it's kinda edgy and sexy, like you're rebelling against being a prey mammal," Clawhauser whispered. Judy smiled and rolled her eyes, liking and thinking the idea foolish at the same time.

"Sexy?" She asked, not sure what the attraction would be.

"I don't know… it's kinda cute… you know… uhhh… I don't have an excuse, I just have a thing for the whole goth look on girls…" Clawhauser said. Judy was slightly surprised, both by the fact that Clawhauser was into girls, and that he leaned towards the dark, edgy type.

"Really? Huh… well, opposites attract," Judy figured.

"Ha! Guess so. That's why you and Nick have been getting along so well I'm guessing?"

"I mean, we've only been on one date so far…"

"Yeah, but you talked about it for two weeks," He said. Judy's ears turned red.

"Yeah it was pretty nice…" she said, giving an embarrassed smile.

"Did he kiss you?" Clawhauser asked, giddy.

"Ben!... that's personal…" She said, feeling her ears burning up, smiling in pure embarrassment.

"Oh come on hun-bun, spill the beans," He pressured.

"Yeah…" she said, covering her face slightly.

"And?.." he continued, hoping for a review.

"Oh, would you stop it!"

"No, I can't! You two are too darn cute!" He said, purring with excitement. Judy rolled her eyes and smiled. Nick then walked up, having come back from the punch table, and handed Judy a cup of the blood-red liquid.

"Here's your meal for the evening, Count Crackula," Nick joked.

"You are never going to let that go, are you?" she asked, slightly peeved by the prodding ghost.

"No, I'm afraid watching you fall into a pile of drugs was too hilarious to ever unsee. Tanya would be proud," He said.

"Going to the hospital and getting chewed out by Bogo afterward was not though, I'd like to remind you."

"No, but you shouting 'wheres the rest of 'em! I could take twelve of these assholes!' was worth that small price," Nick said. Judy smirked; after hearing all of the things she had said, she couldn't help but be proud of her tweaked-up self for being so true to her regular self.

"Hey speaking of Tanya, what are they up to? You think they like Halloween?" Judy asked.

"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say no," Nick replied, figuring the two that deal with the real-life counterparts of Halloween were probably not fans.

"You never know. You wanna give 'em a call and see if they want to come and spice up the party with some A3I friends?" Judy asked.

"I should probably ask Bogo first-" Nick started, cut off by Clawhauser.

"On it!" He said, rushing to find the chief.

"-As I was saying, I _should_ ask Bogo first, but I'm not going to," Nick finished. Judy shook her head at the nefarious fox.

"You are gonna be in so much trouble if he says no," she said.

"And you are gonna be in so much trouble if you don't loosen up," Nick said, booping Tanya's contact on his phone. She answered within seconds.

_"Helloooooo!"_ She said, drawing the word out like a ghost.

"Ooooh! My fellow ghooost! We've got a party down at the ZPD that ain't exactly poppin', you wanna get some friends and mozy on over?" Nick asked.

_"Mozying we are, actually. Clare threw us a Halloween party and the second stage was to invade the ZPD, so we are on our way as we speak… we are a veritable horde, stumbling through the streets,"_ Tanya said. Clawhauser then came over, out of breath.

"Wait! Nick! The chief… he said… he said he didn't want any more guests… phew!" he said, trying to recover. Judy looked at Nick, wide-eyed; she had heard what Tanya said about the A3I heading over.

"Well, that's a shame… because the A3I is already on their way. And I was not the one who invited them, they were planning on coming anyway. So, now we have a big party, and I am not the one to blame. See fluff? Things always work out," he said.

_"I better get back to ghost duty… I was assigned to try and keep everyone on the right path since we have all had just a liiiiittle bit to drink…"_ Tanya said.

"Good luck! See you in a few," Nick said, hanging up.

"That doesn't sound good," Judy said.

"What doesn't?"

"They've been drinking!"

"Yeah, cause they know how to party. Come on, Fluff, you can't be that stiff."

"I don't think this is going to be good…"

A few minutes later, they were both proven right; it was one hell of a party, but at the same time, it was a _hell_ of a party. Bogo had been shouting for a good few minutes, trying to create order before finally accepting the chaos. It was loud, it was joyous, and it was a mess.

"So, how have things been over here at the 'ol ZPD?" James asked, a slight slur in his voice. Tanya stood next to him, sipping on some of the red, alcohol-free punch from the ZPD.

"Not bad at all. Judy's been getting in trouble with confiscated product though," Nick said, smirking. The two were horrified, rightfully so given they were the ones that facilitated the two's entry into the A3I's most secretive work. Judy gave Nick a stout punch in the shoulder.

"What Nick is trying to say is that I fell into some 'product' on a drug raid and… well, I apparently had a very good time that I do not remember in the slightest," Judy said. James burst out laughing and Tanya had a hard time hiding her smile.

"Welcome to the club," the snow leopard said to the rabbit.

"What was the stuff?" James asked.

"...Cocaine," Judy replied, embarrassed. This statement was quickly followed by whoops of stupid laughter from the other two. Judy facepawed and Nick put a paw on James' shoulder as he folded over laughing. The deer stood up and waved his hooves, demanding the attention of the other two. Tanya wiped a tear from her eye and listened.

"She's Count Crackula!" He yelled, setting Judy's ears on fire. Nick wheezed and gave her shoulder a light smack, and the three completely lost it for several minutes. Judy slowly warmed up to the humor as the hollering continued, eventually laughing herself to tears with the other two. When they finally recovered they found the entire precinct watching them.

And then they laughed even harder.

After another hour or so they were the last few at the party - the last who were conscious anyway. The four filtered out through the doors and said their goodbyes as they parted ways. They all walked through the crisp October night, not bothering to look up at the surprisingly clear sky. Dozens of miles above them a streak, a flash of light, scarred the sky for only a moment.

A small piece of debris from the outer reaches of the solar system had blasted through the atmosphere, moving faster than any bullet. It glowed in extreme heat for a brief moment before being completely annihilated by the scorching air.

It was not alone.


	2. Discovery

"Woah! Did you guys see that!" The pig said, his friends staring in astonishment at the fireball. They had come out to watch the meteor shower, and they were not disappointed.

"Yeah, how could you miss it!" His sheep friend agreed.

"As cool as this is, I'm getting tired of this, it's just little flash after little flash," the red rabbit said.

"Oh shut up, fox boy," a black rabbit said.

"You're just jealous 'cause you can't get a girl," the red rabbit replied. He turned his head back to the sky just in time to see another shooting star. It was just above the horizon, but rather than a flash, it just kept glowing, traveling across the sky.

"You guys don't think…" the pig said, hoping that he wasn't about to fall prey to a cosmic disaster. His suspicion was confirmed when the bright glow stopped and a much dimmer red glow took over, its trajectory arcing to take it into the forest southeast of town. There was a distant thump, and the four were left speechless. They had just witnessed an actual meteor impact.

"No way," The sheep said.

"That thing landed didn't it?" The grey rabbit asked.

"Guys, we gotta go look for it," The pig said.

"Are you crazy?"

"They're worth a ton of money!" He argued.

"Yeah but it's not worth going out into the woods at two A.M! We'll get kidnapped by that Peter creep!" The red rabbit said.

"Pft, you really believe those stories?" The pig asked.

"Yeah, he does, foxy boy is also a scaredy-cat," the sheep chided.

"I have a date with my girlfriend tomorrow anyway, I can't afford to get lost in the woods like you chumps," he said, trying to rub in the fact that he was the only one of them that wasn't single.

"Yeah, whatever. Come on guys, let's go get rich!" The pig said, leading the sheep and rabbit with him. The red rabbit went back home as the three went towards a new adventure. It only took a few minutes for them to cross the town, and they were combing the forest in no time. They walked just within sight of each other, trying to find their alien pot of gold at the end of its rainbow of fire. They held their phones out like flashlights, the sheep using his pocket knife like a machete. Soon enough the rabbit was shouting.

"Hey, guys! I got something!" He said, waving the two over, his cellphone's flashlight pointed at the other two. They walked to the point of light and found the rabbit standing in front of a ring of scorched forest, small fires still burning all around an extremely hot object.

"That is not a meteor…" the sheep said. It was more like an octopus, eight short fins extending from an egg-shaped body.

"Maybe that's a normal shape?" The pig wondered, figuring that if it melted it might make a weird shape as it plowed through the air. They walked inside the ring of fire but quickly retreated as the immense heat from the object singed their fur. It wasn't just red hot, it was orange, almost yellow.

"That thing must be at least three-and-a-half thousand degrees," the rabbit said, his father's blacksmithing giving him a familiarity with color temperature. The fins suddenly retracted, and it started steaming, an oily, chemical smell filling the air. The object quickly cooled, going from orange to red and finally to a matte metallic color. They were certain now that this was no normal meteor.

"We gotta get out of here," the pig said.

"What if they need help?" The rabbit asked, figuring that a spacefaring alien would have no reason to make such a landing.

"Dude, who knows what that thing is, it could be a terraformer or something!" The sheep said.

"I wanna at least know," the rabbit said. He slowly walked forward, the two following a few steps behind. He crouched in front of the small crater, a foot or so away from the object itself. It was roughly half his height, not very large at all, and the dirt below it had turned to a glassy rock from the intense heat. He reached out a paw to touch it, and an opening appeared in the smooth metal. He recoiled and stood up, his friends stumbling away, and watched as a small, fleshy creature crawled out.

"Holy shit," he said, realizing that he was bearing witness to something no mammal had ever seen before; life from another planet. The tentacled creature slowly crawled towards him and he knelt down, extending a paw to it.

"Bro don't!" The pig said.

"What's it gonna do to me? It can't eat me, it's not from this planet, it's not-" he said, pausing as the thing reached a tendril out and touched his paw. It was smooth, and slightly slimy, like a worm. Soon enough it had crawled onto his paw and he stood up, cradling it. "You ok little buddy?" He asked, the creature seeming fairly docile so far.

"Why did you pick that fuckin thing up…" the sheep said.

"It's just a living thing, and an intelligent one too, probably," the rabbit said. The other two saw that it wasn't hurting him and got closer to look at it, the pig using his phone to record it.

"Woah… it's like a sea urchin," the pig said. Something caught his attention, moving around on the rabbit's arm was another tendril, too far from the creature to belong to it. "Bro… your arm," he said, pointing at the new tendril. The rabbit lifted his arm to find dozens of tendrils hanging off of him. He screamed like he had never screamed before. He tried to drop the creature only to find that its tendrils were burrowing into his skin, blood pouring out of the gaps where his pulling had separated his skin from its own. It didn't even hurt.

"Get it off of me!" He cried, the pig dropping his phone and reaching over to rip it from his paw. The sheep held him while the pig tried to get it off, but they stopped as soon as they noticed tendrils coming out of the rabbit's mouth and nose, covered in slime and blood. His face was blank as his eyes popped and tendrils escaped from the sockets. the other two dropped their friend like a bag of rocks, watching as his body split apart under its own weight.

The pig screamed as he realized his hoof was bleeding, a tendril having penetrated him without even noticing. The sheep pulled out his knife and looked the pig in the eye, the pig nodding to him to cut his arm off. The sheep grabbed his upper arm and went right for the elbow, hoping that the joint would be easier to cut through. The pig squealed in pain, and within seconds his left hoof was gone. The sheep tried to let go of his arm but found himself having to pull to remove his hoof.

In a blind rage of fear, the sheep chopped his hoof off in one slice, not even feeling the pain due to his adrenaline. The pig collapsed into a pile, his bones dissolved and nothing but a mass of flesh left. The sheep started running but legs soon gave, the rabbit's remains having infected his legs without warning. He lay on the ground, unable to move, and watched as his vision slowly went dark, getting more and more difficult to think by the second.

A mass of flesh separated from the pig to attach itself to his phone, dragging itself under a bush to hide while it drained the energy. The remains of the three mobilized themselves, traveling to wherever they could find more creatures to assimilate.


	3. Red Alert

The big cat sat at her desk, reviewing the compiled social media reports for the week and trying to recover from the mild hangover she had. The tech team had developed an artificial intelligence tool that could find and suppress social media reports of enigmatic events, and it was proving quite successful. Most of what the cat was seeing was fairly run-of-the-mill ghosts, UFOs, and a mysterious injury or death here or there, but nothing case-worthy.

"You see anything, Tanya?" The whitetail deer said to her from his desk across the small room.

"Nope, not yet at least…" she said, the buck shaking his head lightly. He too had a hangover, a slightly more severe one.

"Man, what a slow-"

The phone rang.

He looked up to the phone on his desk and discovered that it wasn't just ringing; the hoofset was glowing and blinking red, a sign of a military emergency. The deer immediately picked it up.

"Special Agent Hornsight, comms code?"

_"Alpha Tango Foxtrot Niner Mike. Is Snowcloud there?"_

"Yes, going to speakerphone, close the door Vecher," he said. Tanya shot up from her desk and flung the door closed, immediately walking back to sit on James' desk.

_"Agents, we think an anomaly landed in Deerbrooke last night, it came in with the thirty-four-ninety meteor shower. It is made of something highly metallic, but when we ran spectro on the entry signature it had a few lines we don't recognize; it's not your standard iron-nickel impactor. We don't know what it is, but you guys need to get down there to find out. We need all paws on deck, this might be the real deal."_

"Got it, We'll get to work right away," Tanya said.

_"Godspeed agents. Military resources are at your disposal for this, ask and you shall receive. We're sending the estimated landing coordinates,"_ the male voice said. A few seconds later Tanya had a text on her phone, listing the coordinates.

"They said all paws on deck, should we get the officers?" She asked. James nodded, and she dialed Nick's number.

…

On the opposite end of the city the fox and rabbit were stopped on the side of a highway, a car pulled over in front of them. Judy had been chosen to confront the mammal after a round of rock-leaf-claws, neither of them having the energy after last night's party and excursions. Nick was sitting in the cruiser, scanning the environment to make sure Judy was safe on the road when his phone rang. He casually took it out and let out a 'huh' when he saw it was Tanya calling.

"Hey hey! How's your hangover treating you at work?" He teased.

_"No time to chat, you guys need to head to the A3I headquarters in civilian clothes with luggage to last a few days, ASAP. Use your sirens, find jetpacks, whatever, get here quick cause this is no joke,"_ she said.

"Uhh… okay! Looks like this traffic stop is over. E.T.A. fifteen minutes," he said, beginning to freak out. He hit the radio on his chest and called to Judy. "Carrots we got an emergency elsewhere, drop the ticket," he said. She looked over at him with wide eyes before looking back to the mammal in the car.

"Well, It's your lucky day, we gotta go. Uhhh, formal warning: don't speed anymore! Jeepers!" She said as she walked away from the badger. She climbed into the cruiser and started the engine. "What's going on?"

"Tanya called and told me to get to the A3I headquarters yesterday, apparently something serious is happening."

"Oh sweet cheese… I swear if we have to go to hell again…" she started.

"No kidding," Nick said. Judy switched the cruiser to A3I mode, the license plate turning over from ZPD to GOV, the lights sinking into the roof, and the entire exterior, including the windows, suddenly turning a deep black. The lights and sirens dominated the streets, but the colored lights were now in the head and tail lights rather than atop the vehicle. They sped down the highway, headed back to their apartment to get their normal clothes. Nick pulled out his phone and dialed the chief's office.

_"What's happening Wilde?"_ he answered, knowing that this was probably nothing good.

"The A3I just told us to get our tails over to assist them, and they're not playing around. I'll give you more details once I know 'em but right now it doesn't seem like we have much of a choice," he said.

_"Ugh, not again…-"_ he sighed _"-I suppose you two have a job to do. Do it well and stay out of trouble. Good luck,"_ Bogo said, not sure if there was anything else for him to do but to tell them not to get killed. Within minutes they were in front of their apartment building and they charged up the stairs to their respective floors.

"Tanya said to pack enough clothes to last a few days," Nick said as Judy ascended past his floor.

"You think we should keep our holsters on?" She asked, stopping briefly. They had been given the under-clothes holsters for use at work with the ZPD in case they ever needed lethal force, a privilege for the partial special agents.

"Yeah, just in case," Nick confirmed. They nearly sprinted to their rooms and threw off their police uniforms, putting on casual civilian clothes as ordered by Tanya. Minutes later the two emerged from their rooms in new outfits, Judy in her favorite pink shirt and jeans, Nick wearing a polo shirt in an attempt to look more high-class than his standard casual attire.

"You goin' golfing?" Judy prodded.

"Don't even start carrots, you look like you're about to head on down to the weekly ho-down and talk about your tractor," Nick snarked back, making Judy suppress a laugh. The two jogged down the stairs and walked briskly to their cruiser, deciding that Nick should drive this time. The sirens wailed as they sped to the A3I headquarters where a rabbit in a suit ran out into the street in front of them with a paw out, trying to get them to stop. Nick rolled down his window for the rabbit as he walked to the driver's side.

"Agents Vecher and Miller are waiting on the helipad, I'll take your car to the garage," He said, not wasting a moment. The two immediately got out, opened the side doors to grab their luggage, and rushed to the building. Once they were inside they struggled to find their IDs for the doe behind the desk, but she waved them on, knowing who they were and that they were in a hurry. They went to the elevator and took a breather while it rose to the top floor.

"We're kinda just diving into this one aren't we," Nick said, realizing that they were about to get on an aircraft of _some kind_ to go _somewhere_ to do _something_.

"Huh… it doesn't feel any different than before to me," Judy said. The doors opened and they nearly ran up the stairs to the roof, bursting through the door to find James and Tanya also in normal clothes, a private helicopter behind them. They motioned for the officers to follow and all four got in the aircraft, which promptly took off. They put on headsets and James started briefing them, his baseball cap, plaid flannel shirt, and cargo shorts betraying how intense he was.

"The air force reported to us a highly metallic object entering the atmosphere last night, but they couldn't determine the composition, all they could tell was that it wasn't your typical meteorite. It might be alien in origin, so we need to get in there and recover it covertly, and we need to do it before somebody finds it," he said.

"What do you mean, they couldn't determine the composition? Did they have it in a lab?" Judy asked. Tanya replied.

"No, they ran a spectroscopic analysis on the entry signature. When things burn up in the atmosphere, they emit certain wavelengths of light, we call them spectroscopy lines - just colors really - that correlate to what the object is made of. When they looked at the spectroscopic signature of this, they found a few lines that didn't correlate with any known elements. It's something we've seen before in objects of E.T.S origin," she said.

"You've seen before?" Nick asked.

"Well… yeah… we do aliens and UFOs too, if you guys forgot," Tanya said.

"I guess I'll have an existential crisis later, once this is all over… what's the game plan right now?" Judy said.

"We're gonna pose as rich friends of you two, taking you on vacation away from the city, hence the helicopter and civilian clothes and everything. Once we're in town we'll check into a hotel, then you two will wander around town a bit, check if anyone has seen anything - keeping them quiet if they have - and we'll head off into the forest to the southeast of the town to look for the object," James said.

"What if there are problems?"

"If you two encounter anything in town, use your discretion to either give us a call, make an arrest, or, worse comes to worst, get the military. I'll send you two a link to download the application we use to communicate with other government agencies," Tanya said, taking out her phone.

"What if we don't hear from you two?" Nick asked. The two were slightly stunned, unsure how to answer. They didn't know how exactly they'd get hurt looking for an alien probe, but it wasn't a bad thing to consider.

"Let's say if you contact us and we don't contact back, get the military involved right away. We don't foresee there being any complications, just a quick recovery mission. If there are issues though, we need to have a serious, immediate, and drastic reaction. We don't let this shit slip, a huge majority of our civilization believes that god, or gods, created only us mammals, and hearing otherwise would throw a large wrench in machinery that nobody knows how to fix," James said, Tanya shaking her head.

"I don't get that, people are so weird."


	4. Camping and Perusing

The helicopter gently set down at the small airport just outside town. It was built for crop dusters and private planes, but today it was for the "millionaire couple" Katya and John Stechauner and their friends, celebrity cops Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde. The four stepped out and immediately started walking to the gate of the perimeter fence. There were no terminals at this airport, only a small control tower and a few hangars.

"So, do we have a ride?" Judy asked as she carried her luggage by her side.

"Nah, we're just going to walk, the hotel isn't far," Tanya replied, her tail flicking slightly, holding onto the straps of her backpack. The four left the airport and walked down the quiet street, enjoying the peace and calm for however long it was going to last. The sky was clear and blue, the sun beating down with its intense and nearly unlimited energy, though still failing to warm the cool October air. The leaves had already lost faith in the sun, various shades of red and yellow, soon to fall and leave the forest a sickly expanse of sticks.

Despite the cold, the four were rather comfortable in their lightweight clothes, all of them having ancestry in rather cold climates. They chatted quietly and enjoyed the festive Halloween decorations strewn about. The shops all had stickers of pumpkins and ghosts and whatnot in their windows, with black and orange streamers and tinsel practically everywhere, even the utility poles and power lines were festivised. Clearly, the town took the holiday seriously.

They soon found themselves in front of a small hotel, strewn with festiveness much like the rest of the town. It was also clean and quaint, much like the rest of the town. It was mildly decorated, a few streamers on the ceiling and a pumpkin here and there, with a plastic Jack-o-lantern drooling fog on the desk. The deer behind the desk was very polite.

"Hi! Checking in?" She asked.

"Yes, one room, two beds should do," Tanya said.

"Sure! We've got plenty of space, any preference for floor or view?"

"No, thank you though," Tanya replied, giving a smile. After dealing with some paperwork and trading of a credit card the deer gave the cat a small envelope with four room keys, the number indicating they were on the second floor. They took the stairs and found themselves in front of a locked door, room two-seventeen. Tanya started fumbling with the envelope. She got a card out and passed it to James, who stuck it into the slot above the door handle.

The light turned red.

"Oh come on…" James said.

"This is not what we need right now, door," Tanya added. He stuck the card in again.

Red.

"What are you lookin for, a damn password!" James muttered.

"Just try another key," Judy said. She sifted through the cards again and pulled out another, giving it to James who promptly stuck it into the door.

"Come on…"

red

James nearly growled.

"Can't you see we have shit to do?" He said in almost a whisper, sticking the card in again.

It turned green. Tanya nearly flung it open.

"Jesus, thanks! Precious seconds wasted, hope you're happy, door," James said. The four quickly set their luggage down, and the two agents started getting their camping and alien-artifact-finding gear ready.

"So should we just head out to check on the town?" Judy asked, the officers simply watching the two get themselves together.

"Yeah. Head to a coffee shop or something, a hip one, something that would attract young mammals," Tanya suggested.

"How do we go about bringing up the topic?" Nick asked.

"Good question… how about something along the lines of 'anything new in town?' Or something like that," James offered.

"That'll probably work… I guess we'll head out. Good luck in the forest, we'll panic if we hear any gunshots," Judy said.

"Good plan. Cya later," Tanya said.

"Wait… should we bring our guns?" Nick asked. The two thought for a moment.

"You might as well. You have your holsters?"

"Yep, might as well," Nick said. The two took a room key each and left, heading down the stairs and back out into the festive and cold town. They walked and looked for a coffee shop, wondering how in the world they were going to keep a whole town in the dark of what had just landed next to it.

"So why are we here?" Judy asked.

"What?" Nick responded. She shook her head and then gave him an exaggerated wink to imply she meant what is our cover story? Doofus. "Ohhh, sneaky, Carrots. Didn't Katya and John just want us to relax and get away?" He asked back.

"Yeah, I guess. What about them?"

"They like camping," Nick said. Judy smirked, clever fox.

"Why don't we find a coffee shop?" She said.

"Let's ask around, see what's good," Nick said. They continued to walk in the cold, looking for a mammal to ask about the best coffee shops, and they rounded a corner to find a young red rabbit heading towards them.

"Oh, excuse me," Judy said. He stopped and his ears lifted, attentive. "We're from out of town and we're looking for a nice cafe, any suggestions?" She asked.

"Oh! I was actually headed to the Red Velvet cafe to meet my girlfriend, that's a pretty good one," he said.

"Mind if we follow along?" Judy asked.

"Sure!" He said with a smile. They started walking and Nick couldn't help but start questioning him.

"So, anything new in town?" He asked.

"Nah, not really. Same old same old. It's pretty quiet here. You guys see the meteor shower last night?" the rabbit asked.

"No, it's too bright in the city to see anything," Judy lied.

"Aw, that's a shame. Me and my friends were watching it last night. We actually saw something land in the forest, they went to look for it but I didn't really feel like wandering around in the forest late at night," he said.

"Wow! Did they find anything?" Nick asked.

"Actually, I don't know, I havent heard from them. They don't normally wake up this 'early' and they didn't say anything last night. They probably wandered around the woods for a few hours, got tired, and crashed back at their houses," he said.

"Ha! Yeah, thats kind of a needle in a haystack sort of thing," Nick said, hoping to god they hadn't found anything. He checked his phone to send a text to Tanya about this, but instead found one from her saying that they were losing service and that they would call them at eight P.M. "Apparently John and Kat are losing connection, they'll call at eight so if they don't we'll have to do something," Nick continued.

"Oh, ok," Judy said, internally spooked, both by what Nick had said and the rabbit.

"Looks like we're here," the rabbit said, opening the door for them. They walked in to be met with a dark and spooky cafe, the festive decorations looking more like a horror show than a Halloween party. The rabbit waved goodbye to them as he walked over and sat down next to a female grey fox. The two waved back and looked at each other.

"Huh, guess we're not the only ones in town," Nick said.

"Who' da thunk it," Judy said. They ordered coffees and sat down at a booth in the corner of the small space.

"So it seems like they might not be alone with their meteor hunting," Nick said quietly.

"Guess not… hopefully they can get in there before anyone else," Judy said. She lifted up her cup to take a sip when the power went off.


	5. Unrest in the Forest

The snow leopard set down her backpack and took out the Geiger counter, hooking up the slightly modified device to her phone. She stood up and put the backpack on again, praying that they were the first to arrive.

"You wanna keep an eye out for burned areas while I try to use this thing?" Tanya asked James, the deer much taller than her.

"I'll try," he said, the forest being too thick to clearly see through. The Geiger counter gave a tick, and he looked to Tanya, who was still sweeping it around.

"Just background radiation, you'd know it if we found the thing," she said. They started walking and every time it ticked James looked at Tanya. He still hadn't seen any burnt foliage, but they soon found something much more sinister. James looked to his side and noticed a glint in the mess of sticks and leaves on the ground, a phone with droplets of blood all over it. Tanya bent down to look at it, and James started putting on gloves.

"Hopefully there's a fairly mundane story behind this," Tanya said, but something told her there wasn't. She realized she had been holding the Geiger counter to her chest, and pointed it to the phone. It gave off one tick, and a few seconds later another.

"It's more than background but it's no more than I'd expect from a mammal, not to mention a phone, I'd have to take it to a lab to know if it's anything more than the blood or the phone itself, I doubt it's got anything E.T.O on it," she said. James picked it up and started inspecting it closely, finding a piece of flesh stuck to the back.

"Oh god!" He shouted, dropping it. He could have sworn it was squirming.

"What?!"

"The thing was still fuckin moving!" He said.

"Could just be electrical…" she started, trailing off as the meat on the phone started to rearrange, dragging itself towards them with long tendrils. Tanya immediately pulled out her gun and shot the phone and fleshy mass to pieces. They then noticed that only twenty feet away was a small burnt area of foliage.

…

The two stepped out of the cafe, watching as dozens of other mammals stepped out into the street. The power was completely gone, and even the cell phone service was down.

"Well this is weird," Nick said.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Judy said.

"Hopefully it's just a routine outage," Nick said. An old goat next to him, who had just left a shop, overheard what he said.

"I barely remember the last time power went out here. Think it was back when my husband worked at the plant, said something down there had gone," She said. Judy looked to Nick with the _I know what we should do_ look on her muzzle.

"Where's the power plant?" She asked the goat.

"It's a little past the south part of town, you just follow this street long enough you should get there. Are you two gonna go check?"

"Yeah, I think we should," Judy said. Nick would have rolled his eyes if he didn't agree that it was a good idea. The two started briskly walking down the street, and as they moved they went faster, eventually sprinting. They made it to the power plant within a minute, barely out of breath. from the outside, it looked like it was in pristine condition, but there was no steam coming out of the stacks.

They walked up to the doors and tried to look inside to no avail. The lights were off in the powerplant, a bad sign given the fact that the backup generators should have turned on to keep the cooling systems functioning. Nick could swear something was staining the window but it was too hard to tell, they were in the shade of the building, with practically no light shining inside.

They pulled out their guns, turning on the under-barrel flashlights to combat the pitch-blackness. Nick pushed the door open and they walked in, sweeping their lights over the hallway and immediately discovering blood. The entire hallway was covered in smears and stains of blood.

"Oh Jesus…" Nick said.

"Looks like we found out why the power is out…" Judy said.

"Should we keep going?" Nick asked.

"We're the only hope for anyone still alive in here…" Judy said. Nick agreed, there was only one thing to do. They moved further down the hallway, hoping to find some answers to their increasing questions, and possibly a way to turn the power back on.

"Hello? A3I, we're here to help!" Judy shouted into the darkness. They scanned over various doors labeled as storage closets, offices, bathrooms, but the one that said "control" was what they were looking for.

"Hello?" Nick shouted. "If anyone is in here, come out slowly with your paws up, we have firearms," he continued. There wasn't a sound. The absolute silence of the place was starting to dawn on Nick; there were no machines running, no lights flickering, no mammals. Nothing.

"Here it is, the control room," Judy said, almost whispering, her flashlight trained on the door. Blood was smeared all over the knob and the heavy steel door was dented, almost completely caved in.

"What the hell happened here, Fluff?" Nick asked.

"Guess we're about to find out…" she replied. She pushed the door open while Nick entered slowly, gun first, and he found the entire room covered in blood. The large windows that oversaw the generator room were almost impossible to see through aside from the one that was in pieces on the floor. The control panel had seen better days with dents, blood, missing buttons, and broken glass covering it. They walked further into the room and Judy looked over the control panel while Nick went to the broken window. He was so shocked by what he saw on the plant floor that he couldn't even gasp.

"Uhuh, huh… ho shit Judy, what the fuck is that," he said, the light from his shaking gun landing on an enormous, fleshy, writhing mass of blood and gore. Limbs and heads of various mammals were amalgamated into the abhorrent pile, globbed on to one of the steam turbines and generators. Judy walked over to see and she froze, in shock. It shifted, the blob accumulating and seemingly creeping towards them. Soon enough a few limbs had assembled and a horrible spawn of carnage was crawling towards them. They sprinted for their lives, and they didn't stop until they were back in town, their paws covered in blood.

…

The two moved past the horrible phone incident rather quickly and made their way to the scorched foliage. In the middle of the blackened area was a silvery egg, sitting in the middle of a shallow crater. Scattered all around were bloody clothes and the occasional chunk of flesh. This was the object, and it looked like they weren't the first to find it.

"Poor guys…" James said. Tanya gagged, remembering that she was looking at the remains of mammals.

"Jesus…" she said. She approached the egg, the Geiger counter buzzing with ticks, as if it wasn't clear that this was the place. It was metallic, as the military had determined, and there was a hole in it. She set her backpack down and took out an endoscope, smirking at James.

"No way…"

"Told you it wasn't useless," she said as she connected it to her phone, replacing the Geiger counter. She slowly put the endoscope into the opening and her phone revealed a small, slimy chamber. "No… oh fuck…"

"What?" James asked, worried.

"It's a capsule… it's a fuckin capsule James, I had a feeling after that phone started crawling…"

"You think..."

"Probably," she said. She put the endoscope back in her backpack and the two started sprinting back to the town, not wanting to waste any time. She constantly checked her phone while they ran, waiting to regain signal, but she saw buildings in front of her before she saw bars.

"Cell service is out… there's no way it's happening this quickly," she said.

"We better get word out about this, fast," James said. They ran through the streets, confused by the enormous number of mammals outside. They decided to head to the hotel, hoping that the officers would have gone there too. Tanya regretted not wearing any eyewear, her eyes stinging as she powered through the cold air.

A voice called out from her left as they passed through an intersection, and they skidded to a stop. Nick and Judy ran up to them, the four equally out of breath, the officers hindpaws covered in blood. They all caught their breath while Judy tried to explain what they saw.

"We… the powerplant, it was covered in blood… there was… this huge thing, horrible," she said, gasping. Tanya held out her paw.

"Wait, wait," she said, bringing the group into an empty ceramics shop. She closed the door and some of the blinds, making sure nobody was peeping on them. "Ok, what happened?"

"The powerplant was pretty beat up, blood everywhere, broken in doors. The plant floor had a massive… something, it was ugly, a big ball of flesh. It started coming after us and we ran," Judy said.

"What do you mean, flesh? Like mammals or something else?" Tanya asked.

"A mix… there were limbs and… faces but it was mostly, just, a pile of flesh and organs," Nick said.

"I had a feeling… its an amalgamator, weird class of organisms, I think they're an engineered bioweapon. We've seen them before, nasty stuff. James, get the military, tell them to bring flamethrowers... as many fuckin flamethrowers as they can get," Tanya said, turning around to point her rear towards him. He unzipped her backpack and took out a large satellite phone. Tanya remembered that she hadn't told the officers what they found in the woods. "Oh! And we found the object, looks like a capsule, a couple mammals found it before us and they… they didn't make it," Tanya said.

"Shit... a rabbit was telling us his friends went looking, guess we know what happened to them... what do we do now?" Judy asked.

"Keep mammals safe until the military arrives, evacuate if we need to," she said. Tanya's head then whipped around, focusing on a moving shadow in the back of the shop. Before she had time to draw her gun a red rabbit emerged from the darkness, the same rabbit that had led Nick and Judy to a coffee shop.

"I'm guessing I wasn't supposed to hear any of that…" he said. The whole group of law enforcement agents sighed and face-paw/hoof-ed.

"No… no, you weren't."


	6. Bedlam in the Backwoods

The four stood, staring at the red rabbit, not sure what to do next.

"Well, I heard it, and I have a feeling I'm a little… uh… outranked, but I study biology; by the sounds of it, I might be able to help," he said. The four were even more confused.

"Uh… I understand, but no?" Tanya said, utterly confused as to why this rabbit would want to work with them while they dealt with such a horrible thing. James agreed internally, giving a sympathetic look to the rabbit who clearly just wanted to lend a paw, but the officers weren't so sure.

"Well hold on Tanya, you're a physicist, it might be good to have a biologist on the team too…" she said. Tanya stopped to think but was interrupted before she could respond. They heard screaming and yelling outside, James peeking through the blinds to see mammals sprinting through the streets, trying to get away from something.

"Shit!" He said, quickly throwing the door open, the other four following him into the street. A rush of mammals flooded into the shop they left and a few mammals sprinted past them. At the end of the road was a single figure, a large pinkish thing with far too many legs. It had roughly six, three on each side, and a few limbs sticking off of the body. It crawled towards them at slightly more than a typical walking pace.

Tanya and James immediately drew their guns, Nick and Judy shortly following, leaving the rabbit to slowly step back and cover his ears, regretting his decision to follow them. They stood in the middle of the street, four undercover agents, guns aimed at a horrible creature as it slowly crept forward.

"Wait until we can get some good shots on it," Tanya said, holding steady. It was fifty feet away, and the officers were getting anxious. Mammals watched from all around, peeking through the dark glass to watch their brave saviors battle the terrible thing.

James took the first shot, and after observing how little it did, the other three opened fire, shredding the creature with all they had. It was only a few seconds before they were out, Nick saving a few bullets just in case. The beast slumped to the ground, looking even more like hamburger meat than it had before. They waited for a few seconds, looking over the smoking barrels of their guns, and the rabbit was the first to step forward. The four followed closely behind as he knelt down to inspect it.

It was bleeding slightly, but it was still moving, albeit not in a coordinated manner. Small sections of it twitched and writhed. _Its CNS must be disrupted,_ the rabbit thought _._ It was like a bug that had just been crushed, its legs still twitching. Small tendrils, like worms, wiggled about all over it, palpating the air and everything around them. He started reaching out a paw to touch one and Tanya grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back.

"It might be contagious," she said. He quickly stood up, not wanting to catch whatever the hell it was.

"It's weird, but it's got some familiarity to it… I forgot what they're called, but it's got these things-" he started, cut off by the pile suddenly shifting. The five backed away and watched as it split into many smaller creatures, pulling themselves towards the group faster than they were comfortable with. They ran back into a shop and closed the door, watching through the windows as the creatures dispersed themselves, crawling toward the other shops. One of them was headed to the shop they were currently in. It climbed up onto the glass with ease, gangly tendrils exploring the surface.

"What were you saying?" Tanya asked, her eyes fixated on the blob.

"Its got these things… barbels, that's what they're called! They're like tastebuds, catfish have them, it must be how this thing hunts," he said.

"It must have thought the generators in the powerplant were pretty tasty," Nick said.

"What?" Tanya blurted.

"There was a big mass stuck to the generator in the powerplant," he repeated. Tanya let out a "huh" and put a paw to her chin. She looked around at the shop they were in, a strange antique store of some kind, and she pushed her way through the crowd of mammals to the back of the store. She looked for a storeroom and found what she wanted; a piece of packing foam. She took it and walked back to the window, standing in front of it for a moment.

She put the foam on top of her head and started rubbing it against her fur before removing it to hold it close to the window. The tendrils of the creature moved to follow the statically charged piece of foam, and Tanya's suspicions were confirmed. They were some kind of electromagnetic sensory organs. _That's why it was stuck to that phone…_ she thought.

"That's why it was on the generators," Judy said.

"And that's how we're gonna fight it?" The rabbit wondered aloud, unsure and hoping for confirmation.

"We might be able-" Tanya started, cut off by a sharp tap on the glass. The blob had formed a hard, tooth-like protrusion, and banged it against the hard surface. It tapped again, louder this time, and Nick's heart started racing. _No, it's just a dream, it's not real,_ he started thinking. His first panic attack had been caused by a dream about a creature trying to get through a window in much the same way, and it had taken half an hour of Judy holding him while he shook and cried to recover.

The blob recoiled, and the two agents started pushing everyone back, Judy pulling on Nick. It brought the tooth down and shattered the glass, the creature entering the shop and pulling itself towards the mass of mammals. The agents tried to help mammals get back, but there was only one door in the back, and they feared the worst. James tried to reload his gun but couldn't find his spare magazine, not having packed one due to his ignorance of the possibilities. Nick finally started to come-to as Judy nearly dragged him away from the thing. He lifted his pistol and fired one round into it, splattering it across the floor. The small parts left were too small to move fast, but the other creatures were headed their way.

The crowd had all shuffled through the shop into the backroom and the five moved in, watching as mammals left through the back door. They moved with them, finding themselves in an alleyway, back into the dim, cool October evening. Mammals murmured, terrified of the implications of what they had just seen, and they moved towards the street, the other end of the alleyway a dead end. Tanya closed the heavy steel door and the five kept watch of the back of the shop, waiting for more creatures to come through the door.

A scream from the front of the group had them turning around, a loud roar of some surely horrific beast following soon after. A wave of limbs and blood flew through the air, and the crowd started stumbling back through the alleyway. The five sprinted, but the group of mammals was too densely packed to move as fast, mammals clawing and climbing over other mammals to get out, slowing down the group as a whole. They made it to the end of the alleyway and Tanya squatted down, holding out her paws for James to stand on. He put one hoof into her paws and stood up, the incredibly strong cat standing up and throwing the deer into the air, where he grabbed the edge of the building and climbed up.

She threw the other three mammals like ragdolls, James catching them at the top. She waited for a few moments, watching the wave of carnage get closer, grabbing and throwing a few of the civilians as well. Two more deer, three rabbits, and a pig were the only ones that made it out of the crowd, and Tanya jumped up last, climbing on to the roof as the horror reached the end of the alleyway.

The survivors all took a moment to catch their breath, looking at each other, so many uncertainties ahead of them. Before they could even cry a tendril poked up on the edge of the roof, and Tanya started ushering them to start moving along the flat tops. They climbed up a short staircase onto a two-story section of the building and looked over the edge down onto the street. It was full of gore, the remains of dead mammals taken captive by the visitor, but they weren't just blobs or piles. Like the creature that had crawled its way from the powerplant, they had defined limbs. Tanya looked back to see the mess from the alleyway oozing up onto the roof, sandwiching the group.


	7. Hold Up Your Sword

They were stuck, there was nowhere to go. They were dead meat, either from the things in the street, or the thing creeping toward them on the roof.

"I've got it," one of the deer said, pulling out a large flask. "Anyone got a lighter?" He asked. James pumped his fist, feeling victory close. Surely someone had a lighter.

"Shit," one of the rabbits said, realizing that he had forgotten his.

Nobody had a lighter.

"I've got it," Nick said, pulling out his gun again.

"Oh, we can take apart one of the shells," Tanya said. It wasn't what Nick had in mind, but he figured she knew better. He rocked the slide back, ejecting a shell for Tanya. She took it and pulled the bullet out with her teeth. "Someone get me a piece of cloth," she said through the corner of her mouth. The pig ripped his shirt apart, handing her a piece. She took the cap off of the flask and inserted the bullet casing, mixing the gunpowder and the alcohol, then wrapped the cloth around the shell to hold it in place. _Thank god these shells are rimfire,_ she thought. Her plan wouldn't work otherwise.

She held the flask like a football and prepared to throw it, aiming just in front of the mass. She knew that the primer in the shell would cause a small explosion, spewing flaming alcohol all over the creature, but it needed to hit something hard to go off. She reared back and took a deep breath, throwing the flask carefully. They all watched as it flew through the air, spinning and exploding as it hit the rooftop. A ball of fire spewed from the flask, and islands of fire erupted atop the fleshy mass.

They quickly realized that, as good an idea it was, there simply wasn't enough alcohol to incinerate the creature to any meaningful extent. But even after a few seconds, the fires kept burning and they were spreading too. The creatures had low enough water content to be flammable.

"Ha! Take that asshole!" Tanya shouted. The group cheered as the pile of flesh turned into a pile of fire, lighting the evening sky. James turned around briefly to check the street and noticed that the creatures on the street were trying to climb up the wall.

"Guys!" He said, stepping away from the edge of the building. The rest turned around and stepped away, watching as a claw pulled its way over the wall. The deformed head of a fox appeared behind crustacean-like limbs, blood dripping from between the fangs. It let out a horrible shriek as a massive ball of fire exploded behind it. It fell back to the street and the eleven walked to the edge of the building to see the mammals in fireproof suits with flamethrowers walking down the street, torching everything that moved.

"Thank god," a rabbit said.

"Looks like backup has arrived," Tanya said. She jumped down from the two-story building, landing gracefully in the middle of the street. Judy soon followed, and so did the other rabbits. Nick, James, the pig, and the other two deer were left looking around, not knowing what to do.

"I'll catch you!" Tanya shouted.

"What? You are insane!" James said.

"I promise!"

"You can't be serious."

"Come on, it'll be fine."

"I'll take the stairs," he said, walking away. The deer and pig followed him as he went to find a way down.

"You can catch me, right?" Nick said, ok with the quick way down.

"Oh for sure!" She replied. He took a deep breath and a step back before sprinting and jumping, flailing as he soared through the air. Tanya caught him on her shoulder and it felt like his ribs were done for. He coughed and wheezed as she set him down, Judy coming to his side.

"I feel like the pavement woulda been softer," he groaned.

"Sorry… I tried to get you with my paws but…" Tanya started, not sure how to explain why he ended up smashing chest-first into her muscular shoulder.

"What's the plan now?" Judy asked, Nick slowly recovering.

"Well, let the military do their work and get the hell out of here," Tanya said very matter-of-factly.

"Can't we help?" Judy asked. Tanya was slightly confused, then remembered that she was looking at a police officer.

"I mean, you _can_ , I'd rather just leave but, I guess I'm not qualified to do public safety stuff so maybe you two should," she said. Judy looked at Nick, hoping he'd be on board.

"Oh what the hell," Nick said with a sigh. He figured that, after flinging himself off of a burning building surrounded by alien monsters, there was no point in stopping now. "Under one condition though; Snowy, you and Horndog stick around and fight with us," he said. Tanya flattened her ears against her head and tried to give him puppy-eyes, but he was having none of it.

"Don't give me that, you dragged me into this, I'm dragging you further," he said. Tanya bobbed her head for a moment, weighing his statement for validity.

"Yeah that's pretty fair," she concluded.

"Ok, let's get some flamethrowers and roast some-" he started, cut off by an explosion rocking the street, a massive fireball rising into the air to singe their fur. One of the military mammals had been attacked by a creature, the beast's hard claw stabbing right through the aluminum fuel tank.

"Oh shit," James said as he came out of the building next to them. A military truck pulled up with a rhino shouting for civilians to get on board, and Tanya rushed over.

"Hey, do you have any more flamethrowers?" She asked.

"Huh? Civilians aren't allowed to use weapons mam, get in the damn truck," the rhino said. Tanya pulled out her badge.

"Agents Vecher, Miller, Hopps, and Wilde, A3I," she said. His jaw dropped.

"We've got a few in the back, take 'em off the guys. I don't know how many little ones we have," he said. The four raced to the back of the truck, all of them pulling out badges for the large mammals in the back, demanding they remove their weapons and hand them over. Within minutes they were getting off of the truck, Judy unarmed due to a lack of small flamethrowers.

"Wait!" The red rabbit said just after the four got off. They turned to look at him. "My girlfriend, she went home after the power went out… can you go get her?" He asked.

"Where is she?" Judy asked, always up for a new task.

"She's on Oak Street, twenty-one thirteen Oak Street," he said.

"Where is that?" Nick asked, awkwardly holding his new fiery toy. The rabbit jumped off the truck.

"I'll show you," he said, not wanting to waste time with directions.

"I'd say something about civilians in danger but this is the wrong day to get nit-picky," Judy said, following the rabbit. The five sprinted through the streets, dodging slimy aliens and incinerating them as they went. Every few seconds a new explosion shook the streets, another fireball lighting the sky.

"I'm starting to think the whole flamethrower thing is a bad idea," Nick shouted over the roar of fire.

"I don't know… I hope they're not learning," Tanya said, figuring the aliens might be discovering the weak points in their human weapons. The scene that played out at an intersection in front of then confirmed her suspicions. A tiger backed away as a massive creature approached him, tentacles and gigantic insectine legs galore. He sprayed it with fire but it kept coming, and it distracted him long enough for a smaller creature to sneak up behind and puncture the tank.

The fireball stopped the five in their tracks, and they watched as the remains of the massive beast slowly curled up and burned to ash. It was a small victory though, as dozens of other creatures climbed out of the broken windows that resulted from the explosion.

"We gotta watch each other's backs, and we gotta move fast," James said. The others nodded and they kept running, not straight at the army of hellspawn, however.

"Tanya, what if… what if the military can't stop them, what if the aliens keep blowing 'em up," Judy said between pants, the four starting to get exhausted.

"There's always… there's always a way," Tanya said, panting equally as hard. They had cleared the shopping areas and were in a strictly residential neighborhood.

"How much farther redcoat?" Nick asked, ready to drop dead.

"Its… gah! It's fr-three houses down, we can cut through a lawn," he panted. There weren't many creatures around but they weren't going to let their guard down. "This way," the rabbit said, leading them through a small property, running around a shed to enter a lightly wooded area. Tanya tripped on something and fell to the ground, her tank smashing her face into the dirt. James rushed back to her, the other three stopping.

"Go! I've got this," he yelled, bending down to help her.


	8. The Deerbrooke Devil

She tried to get up but one of her arms folded near her shoulder and she grunted, only then realizing that she was hurt. Blood poured out of her mud-covered snout and there were a few teeth left in the dirt. James took out his knife and started cutting off her flamethrower, being careful not to cut the straps on her backpack with all of their equipment.

"Ugh, fuck, my leg," Tanya groaned, her face and arm barely on her radar. James looked over to see a rake stuck through her hindpaw, her ankle twisted at an obscene angle.

"Jesus Christ," he said, ripping off her set of tanks and throwing them away. He took off his own flamethrower and left it next to him. "You've got a rake through your paw, it's pretty fucked up, I'm gonna have to pull it off…" he said.

"Oh god," she gasped, trying to keep herself together. Without warning he pulled her paw off of the rake and she screamed, the deer quickly taking one of the flamethrower's straps and wrapping it around her paw to stem the bleeding. "After all the shit we've been through I get taken out by a fuckin rake!" She yelled. He picked her up and cradled her, starting to run through the forest to the next street. She pulled her broken arm up to rest on her stomach and held it near her shoulder where it broke.

…

The three skidded to a stop in front of the house, the rabbit furiously pounding and ringing the doorbell.

"Cindy! Cindy, it's Rob! Cindy, we gotta get out of town!" He yelled. A few pawsteps were heard inside and a beautiful grey vixen opened the door. "Oh thank god!" Rob said, going to hug her.

"Robby what's…?" She started, looking at the fox with a flamethrower and the rabbit. Rob broke the hug to break the news.

"Cindy there's an alien in town, killing everybody, we have to go," he said.

"And you came back to save me?" She said, swooning. He smiled and his ears turned red. "Oh, Rob!" She said, going in for a kiss. The other rabbit-fox duo smiled, their hearts warmed by the young couple.

"So cute," Judy whispered. They kept kissing though, more of a make-out session than anything, and the two's smiles started to turn into frowns.

"Guy's…" Nick said, hoping to distract them.

"Ok, come on guys," Judy said. Cindy reached down and grabbed the smaller rabbit's butt, quite roughly.

"Alright! Break it up!" Nick said, having had enough. The two smiled, embarrassed, and walked down the steps. The fox gave her rabbit a spank on the way out.

"Seriously? You know, I've seen a lot in the last few hours, but this is too much," Judy said, uncomfortable to say the least. James then burst out of the forest, a bloody snow leopard in his arms, and he ran up to them.

"How are we gonna get out of here?" He asked immediately, catching his breath in front of the group.

"My dad has a pretty big food truck, it should be able to fit us," the vixen said. Judy nodded to her and she ran inside to get to her garage. A minute or so later she pulled a comparatively massive van out from around the side of the house. She got out and briskly walked to the back, opening the back doors for the group.

"Do you mind if I drive?" Nick asked.

"Why?" Cynthia asked.

"I'm Police, A3I, I've got more training for keeping mammals safe," he said. He was the only public safety professional who could drive it, Judy being too small, James and Tanya being too large on top of Tanya being incapacitated. He took off his flamethrower and handed it to Judy, the rabbit getting in the back with the rest.

"Ok," Cindy agreed, slightly hesitant but understanding. James laid Tanya down on the floor while Cindy was up front with Nick for directions, Rob, Tanya, James, and Judy in the back. James went to close the doors, but distant yelling caught Judy's attention.

"Wait!" She said to the deer, who had his hooves on the handles. In the distance, through the dim evening, a figure could be seen running towards them. It was a large mammal, probably a tiger or lion, in a silver firesuit, and he was sprinting and yelling for his life.

"Wait! Help!" He shouted.

"We've got you, don't worry!" James yelled back. A few seconds later the mammal made it to the doors, a silver case in one paw, and James pulled him up inside. He slammed the doors and locked them, yelling at Nick to drive. The plan was to head to the highway and get the hell out.

"I'm Agent Hornsight, A3I, who are you?" James asked the suited mammal, his codename more familiar to those in the military. He removed his hood to reveal a tiger.

"Officer Hairson, DERATZ," he said. It was the military's secret research group, and they were not welcome by James' standards.

"What the fuck are you guys doing here?" He asked, furious.

"I don't know man, I was just following orders. They told me to collect a sample but everything went to shit," the tiger said, holding up his small briefcase.

"What do you mean, went to shit?" James asked.

"They're overrun, everyone's dead. Last I heard, containment was gonna fail in a few hours, I got the fuck out of there," he said.

"That was probably a good idea. Tanya, what should we do?" James asked. The broken cat took a deep breath.

"Containment failure… get me the satellite phone," she said.

"You're not…" he said.

"It's the only option, James. I was given the authority, I know when to use it," she said. He let out a massive sigh, getting the phone for her. He gave it to the bloody and exhausted special agent, and she slowly dialed a number on it with one paw. She put the phone to her ear and closed her eyes as she waited for the mayor to pick up.

"This is Agent Snowcloud, there's… there's been a containment-" she coughed, wincing as she instinctively tried to lift her broken arm "Containment failure in Deerbrooke, it's an E.L.E if this shit gets out, I'm requesting permission for a nuclear strike," she said.

The other end was silent.

"This is the real deal, Mr. Mayor," she almost whispered.

 _"I heard the story… if you… if this is the right course of action, so be it… I'll patch you through to air force command,"_ the mayor said, unable to really understand what he had just heard or what he was saying. A few seconds later another mammal spoke.

_"Comms code?"_

"Alpha Tango Foxtrot Niner Mike, Snowcloud," she said.

 _"What are the coordinates? What payload?"_ The mammal asked, struggling to remain professional, knowing immediately why Tanya was calling.

"I don't know the coordinates, Deerbrook township, Deerbrooke county, C.O.P. is vital, payload… three-hundred kilotons, surface detonation. Make it clean, make it look like a meteor," she said, terrified of what she was doing. She knew it was the right thing, but it didn't make it easier.

 _"Orbital drop?"_ The mammal asked.

"You learn something everyday… if that'll look like a meteor, yes," the snow leopard said. Even her, with one of the highest security clearances possible, didn't know that the military had nukes in space.

 _"Drop request submitted to Jormungandr station, T.T.D eight minutes, thirty-seven seconds,"_ the mammal said. Everyone in the van was silent. It was a gut-wrenching silence. An entire town was about to be turned to ash, and whatever couldn't burn would be blown away or melted into a puddle. A weapon with the power of the sun unleashing the ultimate destruction on a city. An object falling from the sky.

"Take a left here," Cindy said quietly.

"We have eight minutes to get six miles away," Tanya said.

"I think we'll be able to make it…" Rob said.

"This thing can go eighty if we really want it…" Cindy said.

"We really, really want it," Nick said, doing his best to get the group out of the God-forsaken town. Tanya sat and felt as the bouncing vehicle shook her broken bones.

"What's in the case?" She asked weakly.

"It's a tissue sample…" the tiger said.

"Throw it out, while we're still in town," Tanya said. The tiger looked at it for a moment but he didn't hesitate; he opened the door of the moving truck and threw the case as hard as he could. It sparked as it skidded across the pavement and came to a stop.

They soon found themselves on the highway out of town, and Nick floored it. The speedometer read eighty-nine, and Nick was glad to see an almost full gas tank. He had been watching the clock ever since Tanya said those terrifying words _eight minutes._ They had two left and if he was right about his estimate, they were five miles away, one shy of Tanya's magic six. The time soon read the proverbial midnight, in reality just after six 'o clock, and Nick prepared for the unknown.

He didn't know why six miles was the number, it might be outside the radiation zone, maybe it's where they wouldn't be fried alive, but he hoped it was where the shockwave was too weak to kill them. Tanya knew what she was saying, and his hopes were reality; this sort of distance should be enough to not even break a window.

A bright flash turned the night into an atomic day, it quickly disappeared and a glow replaced it. It grew in intensity until Nick had to close his eyes, the sky and the landscape around him brighter than even the flash. The tiger in the firesuit shielded one of the windows with his body, holding his helmet in front of the other, trying to protect the other passengers from the intense light.

"Twenty seconds!" Tanya shouted. James stood up and shielded the other window with his body, not wanting the passengers to be sprayed with glass when the shockwave hit. Tense seconds passed by as everyone covered their ears. Tanya could only cover one and Judy went to hold her other, pressing her ear against Tanya's while she covered her other ear with her paw.

The van shook with the ground, the trees outside shaking as the seismic waves passed through. Then a crack, like an impossibly loud gunshot, pushed the entire truck forward. The trees swayed with the nuclear wind, and the sound of an entire forest of trees crackling under strain followed the concussion. In seconds it was over, and the night was dark again.


	9. Epilogue: Unnatural Selection

The thick rubber boot crunched through the rubble, the wearer of a large radiation suit bending down to pick up a small briefcase. It was scorched and radioactive, but a quick inspection revealed the contents to be intact. It was still squirming inside of its plastic sheath, surrounded by foam in its heavy steel container. The mammal in the suit took it back to the truck that would bring it to the lab, where unspeakable things would be done.

"They're saying the cover-up is a meteor strike, you think anybody'll buy it?" The muffled voice in the suit asked another suited mammal.

"Apparently they used a Neptunium core, the fission products and fallout are nothing like Plutonium or Uranium bombs, unless someone's been doing research illegally, nobody will know where the radiation came from," the other figure said.

"The conspiracy nuts are gonna have a field day."

"Yeah, then Conan O'bearman will call them all idiots, everybody will laugh, and life will go on."

"Hopefully. Nobody should know what happened here. Hell, I wish they hadn't told me."

...

The case was set gently on the black counter, surrounded by equipment of inordinate complexity. A brown paw labeled it the previously agreed upon name; _Velensoma Diaboli_. A toxic, creative Satan. It would be hard to come up with a better name for a creature that turned mammals into piles of flesh with tentacles and keratinous limbs. It was nearly unique in its metamorphic abilities, but it was absolutely unique in its electromagnetic receptors. Other creatures like it had been stolen from destruction, right under the Agent's noses, but none had promised so much.

The brown paw picked out a small portion of the flesh and watched as it tried to wriggle away. It was set in a mortar and pestle, ground into mush. Liquid nitrogen was poured into the pestle and the grinding continued until only icy dust remained. It would regenerate quickly without the cold. The powder was picked up by a barbaric tool compared to the others that filled the lab; Sticky tape. This would allow the remains to be separated into extremely thin sections, thin enough for the entire chemistry of the creature to be analyzed.

Every protein, every lipid, the entire genome, every chemical structure identified and analyzed by the machinery and computers of the secret lab. It was a marvelous achievement of modern technology, and nobody knew about it. It was buried one kilometer below the muddy flats of the Wet Zone northeast of the city of Zootopia, where the cold air from tundratown created a permanent storm system that flooded out any possibility of life.

It was difficult for things to escape from the lab, and if they did, they were met with an inhospitable landscape. Still, stragglers made it out here and there, and they were swept up by the A3I mop, a lowly regarded team of two that consistently fixed the mistakes and righted wrongs while their higher authority was ignored. Morality was not even on the map for the military, unlike the Agents, who used it as their compass. All that mattered to them was that mammals were safe, while the military's prime objective was the opposite, with minimal but permissible collateral damage.

And now, with the cost of a town annihilated, a new opportunity for destruction and death was awarded to the military, another power beyond their control for them to attempt to harness. Surely, things would end well.

…

The wolf helped the snow leopard inside her home. Clare Blakesley was lucky to be offered a place to live by Tanya, and now it was playing in Tanya's favor too. It was good to have someone around when you were injured. She had fractured cartilage in her nose, three missing teeth, a clean break in her right humerus, a complex left-ankle dislocation/compound fracture, and severe puncture wounds with bone abrasions and partial tendon severance in her left hindpaw. The doctors agreed that, as bad as the injuries were, she would likely recover completely, with a small chance of issues with her hindpaw.

The big cat slowly set herself down on the couch, the wolf helping her down. Tanya was rather unfazed, not unfamiliar with injury, but it was hard for Clare to see her like this. Tanya was the first mammal she saw after she was literally dragged out of hell, and despite being mostly naked and covered in blood, Tanya didn't hesitate to return a very needed hug. Minutes later, she gave the bloody wolf an expensive suit jacket to cover herself, and the next day offered the recently orphaned wolf her home.

Now the mother she had always wanted was sitting on the couch, bandages over her muzzle, her leg in a cast, and her arm in a sling. She could have died, easily. Clare sat down next to her good arm and leaned up against her, trying to hold back tears.

"It's ok Clare, I'm ok," Tanya said, easily able to tell that Clare was bothered. She wrapped her good paw around the teenager. Tanya was thirty-six now, and while she never really wanted kids, she was comfortable with being a sort of mother to the troubled young wolf.

"I know… it's just… I don't… you could have died," Clare whispered, sobbing lightly. Tanya pulled her closer.

"It'll be ok… I don't plan on it, not any time soon," she said.

…

Nick sipped his warm tea, sitting across from the rabbit who was doing much the same. They were in Judy's apartment, taking a day to relax after the horrors they witnessed.

"Have you heard anything about a death toll?" Nick asked quietly.

"No… but I looked it up, Deerbrook, the town, had a few thousand mammals," she replied softly. Nick shuddered.

"I can't believe that those two's parents happened to be on vacation together," Nick said.

"Who? Rob and…?" She started, forgetting the name of the fox.

"Cindy, yeah."

"Yeah. For a second I was thinking we'd end up taking them in like Tanya did with Clare," Judy said. Nick chuckled and smiled.

"Wouldn't that be interesting," he said.

* * *

_Facilis descensus Averni._

_Impares nascimur, pares morimur, ergo iustitiam quaerimus, rem omni auro Cariorem cur pulvis sumus et in pulverem reverterimus._

_Fiat Iustitia, mundus pereat._


End file.
